Comments

I used to work with a young ER doc in the Reserves who ended up getting called to active duty and going to Baghdad for a year. He told me some hair-rising stories about what the corpsmen had to deal with.

As a medic in the US Army, I’m not sure what to think about a ten week course. I had a sixteen week course to get my MOS, and now I have gone through the ranks to do much advanced training. I hope that the Navy has many avenues for their corpsmen to gain advanced training, because what I came out of training with compared to what I know now is quite a leap.

I am a corpsman deployed to Afghanistan. The compressed training is probably APP (Accelerated Pace Program.) If you have had previous medical training or are just bright, you can go through corps school a little faster. Three years ago (for me)the regular corps school was 4 months. Then, if you were to go with the marines, another 2 months at a FMSS (Field Medical Service School.) That is 6 months of total training. And for some reason, if you want to go to c-school, that is between 2 and 12 more months. I work with a lot of medics. The 91W (combat) medics tell me that they did about the same amount of medical training we did. But, a lot count their infantry school, which is not really medical training. All the soldiers call the corpsman medics. I used to correct them saying, “I am a corpsman.” “What is the difference?” “It is the difference between a sailor and a soldier. Would you like me to call you a sailor.” “No.” I don’t bother correcting anymore. We are all in this together.